When Abram and Sarai were told that they would have children, they knew it was impossible — but Abram knew that it could be done by God’s power. Sarai, I imagine, did not keep trying to convince anyone that she wasn’t barren anymore or that she got a hold of some youth-giving elixir, so that Abram could have faith they would have children. Instead, it came at the proper time that she would have children. Abram believed it would come on God’s timing and by His power, whether she was barren or not, whether she was old or not, whether she believed or not, whether she tried to convince him it was going to happen …. or not.

The song famously sung by Paul McCartney is one of romance and sadness. A lament for what was lost yet longed for. It is a memory of what one had but a short while ago, but does not have. Its core is despair. However, I am remembering yesterday fondly. I have memories of what I enjoyed, but do not still have. If I could write an parallel song, its core would be hope.

I think I could name the four of five people who read my blog still. But then there are these hits on my site from Ohio and Virginia that I can’t place. Get a Xanga account and reply, darn it! Or else I’ll have to stop posting, or, worse, start a new blog elsewhere!

Grampa_David:

“As usual I find your explanation of Scripture makes sense and is reassuring and comforting. But while I believe as you do, I don’t think I actually understand these matters perfectly. For example, God’s foreknowledge and His predestination are concepts that I don’t seem to be able to grasp. I even find myself wondering whether it is really necessary for me to be able to fully understand them.

If God predestinates, in an active sense, some to eternal life, then he must also predestinate others, knowingly, to perdition and eternal conscious punishment in hell! I puzzle over how that could be. After all, do the Scriptures not also teach us that “whosoever will may come” to the Saviour? In other words, do we not all therefore have the freedom to choose? I console myself by saying that God is totally sinless and divine and would never do anything wrong! He knows all things and is incapable of sinning. I safely trust myself to Him!

If you can help me understand some of this, I shall be grateful.”

Take from: http://nachdemgeist.xanga.com/728256597/greetings/

First and foremost, I believe that we must affirm what Scripture teaches even if it seems to contradict. I say “seems” because the tension does not seem to arise in Paul’s 1st century Jewish mind, or at least it doesn’t bother him enough to write that it is a contradiction (or for him to resolve the contradiction explicitly for that matter). It makes me think that we only feel that is a contradiction because of our cultural conditions and various modern assumptions, and, hence, not a genuine contradiction but rather something borne of our unexplored assumptions interacting here.

Second, I am of one mind in questioning whether it is necessary (or even possible) for me to understand. If it is possible for me to understand, I will pursue it. I do not think it is necessary for obedience to God or trust in him. If it is not possible for me to understand it, I will chalk it up on the list of things that belong to God: his ways are not my ways, and his thoughts are not my thoughts. In the proper context of that verse, I am taking that to mean that God has plans, thoughts, and events which man simply cannot comprehend. And, perhaps more importantly, if we trust our own brains more than we trust God, we will go in the wrong direction of finding right beliefs and understanding.

As such, thirdly, the holy Scriptures reveal that God predestines Christians to be adopted as sons, foreknown and justified. The term “predestine” (grk: proourizo) is never used to describe those who are damned. (Some will say we are “all predestined to be adopted as sons, but some refuse their destiny” — this cannot be supported when God’s plans and decrees cannot and will not fail, especially in being thwarted by man.) Now, I realize that this does not prove anything in itself. But St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, “in love He predestined us”. Thus, I think it might be appropriate to talk about predestining those who are shown mercy, but not appropriate to use that term in the context of those who are judged for their sin.

Predestination is an act of love, because without it we are all damned. Every last one of us. So, if you want to make it an analogy: everyone is drowning and a man throws multiple life-preservers. There are more than enough life preservers for those are drowning, but at every instant that one preserver is thrown at one person, it implies that it is not thrown at the rest. It isn’t that the tosser is being unloving in throwing his preserver out to sea, but it is rather very loving. Another analogy might be there are some people unconscious in a burning building, with firefighters going in to rescue them. By picking up one person while others are there, it implies that some are not being saved in that rescue. Even if he goes back in to save more. It is not that he is being unloving, but rather the opposite. My problem with both of these is that they don’t really make clear that God is sovereign, but is rather fighting against something he cannot control, and time is working against him. Instead, God is sovereign and time is not working against an eternal God, per se.

Another analogy would be that there are four criminals in jail for the same or comparable crimes: theft, usury, offering bribes, murder, etc. The judge has each stand before him, yet shows mercy and pity on one of these. And only one of these. Is it fair? Maybe we might think it is not. But I think it is important for us to be slow to judge the greater arbitrator. There are some who think that the others who were just as guilty as the one let go ought to be let go in like manner. This is not true. They are guilty and deserve condemnation. We cannot say the judge should let them all go free because he shows mercy to one.

Thus, in a sense, I don’t see it being unfair that God predestines some to be shown mercy and others not. The very act of electing some implies not electing others, but it can make very intuitive sense to remember that this is a loving act and no less — even when others are not elected. It is clearly this way, I think, because at no point can we say that we deserve any less than no love and no salvation.

It isn’t that we are merely victims of sin and our own sin nature, we actively choose it according to our own desires and want to live in rebellion. Until God changes our traitorous hearts. This is where it is important to recognize your question about “whosoever wills”. Mercy is available to all of those who come to God with repentant hearts. It is not in the least diminished to say that anyone who wants to come to God will be saved. Everyone, apart from God, do no such willing. Everyone, were it not for God to change their hearts would never come to God. Therefore, if God does not predestine, then the number of people “who wills” is zero.

Yet, we see, God uses people to spread the gospel. But it is God who works in the hearts of those he has predestined in such a way that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, these people want to repent and come to him. We have a choice. We always choose according to the strongest desire, which, unless the Holy Spirit changes our desires, we choose apart from God. Every time. We are not faithful by nature, but unfaithful. We do not give our allegiance by nature, but rather our rebellion. We choose to worship ourselves, others, or fake gods. It is God’s grace that we do anything otherwise, and it is his grace any time we do choose otherwise. God is active yesterday, today and forever, changing the hearts of millions each day.

I thought a response in this way was necessary, for I have known you several years, and your questions are common questions. They are common for both Arminians and Calvinists. I thought you merited a unique response.

I find it proper to fix one’s hair and tidy up when looking in the mirror. But even more fitting is the habit of improving one’s appearance while contorting and wincing, so that one looks best with the worst facial expression and approachable at the most uncomfortable. That way one compensates for the extremes of presentation. …And starts the day with a chuckle.

[edited to provide links]

My coworker worked out before work. We push paper and wait on customers. It isn’t strenuous activity. We get paid for that, namely, we get paid for our interpersonal skills and critical thinking. But it seems wholly backward to pay someone else to let you work on their machines, and that work not accomplishing anything but maintenance of muscles. Why not just get a part-time job with manual labor? Granted, the machines work on specific muscles you’re trying to tone and improve, but labor will get rid of fat and tone the muscles that are important for practical considerations.

Backward.

I spoke with my boss, who added to the mix another absurdity: getting unemployment (paid to do no work) and then paying to work at a fitness center. Paid not to work, but paying to work.

Think with me for a moment about dreams. Suppose in your dream you have the following narrative: you’re driving through a parking lot, turn left into an open spot and drive through it to the other aisle. Thus, you are going past the first one, and enter the free one that is behind it (which is open for the other aisle). Immediately, someone parks right at the spot you had just driven through. They get out of their car, and start questioning you sternly: “You almost caused an accident! Didn’t you see us?!”

Trying to remember, you see them coming before you turned into the spot, but in your mind they were a distance off, so you had enough time.

You explain that you had seen them, but thought you had more time, and try to apologize to settle the matter. They are shaken up and are hesitant to accept the apology. After all, according to them you darted into the spot they were going into, and then you continued to the other side as if knowingly guilty.

Now, I have a problem. Suppose in your dream your narrative did NOT include seeing them coming originally, and thus your action to turn was fully justified, aware of no caution in the foreseeable future that might prohibit safely turning into the parking space. Your “trying to remember” was, then, making an imaginary event you inserted into the narrative to make sense of the evidence presented to you (i.e. people parking right after you, claiming you cut in front of them). Therefore, you did not see them, you were verbally attacked, you imagined seeing them, then apologized.

Were this in real life, we’d find this some sort of injustice to the truth. But since it is a dream, the whole thing was imaginary from the start. My question is this: after waking up from your dream, can you tell the difference between remembering seeing them in the dream, and recalling seeing them when you imagined them coming? That is, you’ve awoken from the dream and now want to piece together the narrative. Can you tell the difference between the narrative where you did see them first, and the narrative when you “remembered”-falsely that you saw them first? After all, in either case, you are remembering an imagined event since it is a dream, and in that imagination you yourself organized the set of images to be understood in the timeline you placed it.

The skeptical position, I believe, bears out. You cannot tell the difference. In your brain, they have roughly the same cause and vividness. You cannot know whether you actually saw them in the dream prior, or if you made it up later in the dream in order to make sense. They are both imaginations, and your sense of time is confused by your very imaginations.

Evidence on the earth of material changes notwithstanding, is not history merely the same issue? How much of your history is completely fabricated because you remembered the past in the wrong way (i.e. you made small events up) in order to make the set of beliefs you currently hold coherent?

This is seen with therapists and the concept of repression. Repression is the phenomena of hiding and stashing away various thoughts, usually traumatic, into a sort of forgetfulness or corner of your consciousness with which you never deal. Supposedly, Freudian therapists have helped clients “recover” these thoughts related to child abuse, murders, and other traumatic events of the past. But at what point can you distinguish from your imagination of the past as it seeks to be coherent, and your recollection of the genuine past memories?

Your belief structure in your head is very malleable and very fault tolerant. Perhaps it is false tolerant too.

“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
      To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood:
      Grace and peace be yours in abundance.”

St. Peter writes this to various Christians among many churches. At this time, there were gatherings of citizens all in main city meeting places. They did not have First Baptist of Galatia, Free Methodist of Galatia and Community Fellowship of Galatia. They had the assembly of Christians in Galatia. They were separated by geography, not ideology and tradition. They were united not by convenience and sub-culture, but by the “sanctifying work of the Spirit”.

What I appreciate in this salutation is the use of all these identification he gives to his audience. They are elect, strangers, scattered, chosen, sanctified, and blessed.

They are chosen elect. They were selected by God ahead of time. There is debate over what the phrase “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”. Many believe it is simply that God saw ahead of time in his omniscience who would be saved, and thus they are elect according to what he knew would happen. Others think that they are elected according to the intimate knowledge God has for some (as distinct from omniscience he has for everyone), just as God had for Israel in the Old Testament (see Amos 3:2, which uses the same word “known” to mean an intimate knowledge, and the NIV renders “chosen”). In this sense, God is actively participating in their becoming “sanctified” and enjoying life in Christ in obedience “by the sprinkling of his blood”.

The latter group makes more sense, because if God is actually making a choice, it is active. Whereas knowledge is passive, in a sense. If ones know what will happen, it does not imply necessarily that one caused it. But with this God is electing and choosing, thus he does have some causal connection; otherwise it would make no meaningful sense to call them elect or chosen. Awareness of future events is incoherent to be called “election”, unless the choice was active participation of the very process of selection.

What makes this distinction important is that if one says that a Christian is elect because of foreseeing who has faith, that empties the meaning of who is doing the choosing. Is it God choosing ahead of time that they will have faith, or is it the Christian choosing to have faith so that God would choose them? If the latter, then God really is not doing anything. It isn’t a genuine choice on his part. The election is rigged by the candidates who want to run. God just happens to be right in his choice because he knows what will happen. That neither makes sense in the passages that use the language of election and foreknowledge, but also it goes contrary to the general understanding of corrupt human nature and God’s abounding love in his omniscience.

(I wonder if the best way to read this passage is to say that they are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God, chosen through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, chosen for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling of his blood” — if so, it clarifies somewhat how election process occurs in our lives, in that it gives different facets and methods with which we were chosen)

They are scattered strangers. At this period of time, Christians were beginning to be persecuted by the Roman government. They could not be a united force like the army. They had to spread through the cracks of society. A thin but saturating movement. They were foreigners, though not because they were unfamiliar with their cultures, but because they were aware that the kingdom of heaven was not of this world, and their home was somewhere past the setting sun, across the glassy sea. They had scattered as if they had no home, but strangers as if they were away from home. Thus, they spread through the cities and shared personally the news of Christ, the freedom of the good news, and the obedience that comes from faith.

They are sanctified. They had God the Holy Spirit leading them to Christ, into Christ’s body, and with Christ’s leadership. The Spirit progressively makes holy those elect according to God’s foreknowledge. They are being purified, first, by the sprinkling of Christ’s blood. They are growing obedience, second by knowing God and honoring him with their bodies. They are growing in faith, third, as the Spirit fills their lives and setting them apart for his work.

They are purposefully blessed. According to the foreknowledge of God, they were chosen and scattered. They are unwelcome aliens in the land. They need encouragement and love, God’s grace and blessing to carry them on. They were saved in God’s righteous purpose, Peter prays that they will be blessed by God to do the work for which Christ saved them. And not only enough to get by, as it were, to survive, but to flourish and fill the lands with God’s glory and praise to his name. Peter has seen many times Christ giving in abundance, whether it was with the fish and loaves to feed the five thousand, or the bread and wine poured out to feed all the elect forevermore. He has full confidence that the elect who are spread throughout Asia Minor will be cared for under the supervision and compassion of Christ.

Greetings.

Matthew 7[22] Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
[23] And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

“Jesus never knew these people and yet it would appear to anyone on earth that they were firm Christians.”

I am a Christian today. You’re saying that Christ might not have ever known me?

If Jesus never knew them, how could they have been Christians?

———

The answer is no. Appearances can be deceiving. They appeared to be Christians, but were not, because Jesus never knew them.

I woke up and went to the water closet. As I was there, I looked at myself in the mirror and started playing. Playing the part of a philosophy professor. My hair was a mess, I was strange, and I wanted to talk about truth, right understanding, clarity, logic and history.

I wish I weren’t playing.

I want to be a presenter.

It has been a matter of mere personal reflection the idea that I have a social disorder of some sort. The story goes like this: he doesn’t care about social norms or what people think about him, therefore he has no social awareness or has a disability which impedes such considerations. Of course, these conclusions are without ground, for I am very aware of how I present myself (often for the sake of its effect I do it). Furthermore, I sometimes lay awake at night tossing, barking and throwing my fists at the fact that I may have ruined something important to me through my awareness of how I presented myself or what I said or what someone thinks. So, clearly I am not without these very considerations.

Then there is the other position which states that I am very confident, courageous and, perhaps at worst, arrogant. The idea is that I am so socially aware and proud that I do not care what people think of me, I am good enough and powerful enough (or rather, have enough drive), that I am able to be myself and do what I want no matter the cost. Nevertheless, I am sure only few think of me in this light. But still, at least the formation of this idea is conceived in the notion that I am able to act strangely despite social norms is a sign of courage.

If that is courage, I might agree that I am courageous. I fear, however, that this “courage” is, in reality, some sort of apathy for myself. That is, what is generally which differentiates courage from brashness or fool-hardiness is the idea that the person is willing to sacrifice himself for a cause, for a goal, for even an unworthy pursuit. Suppose, for example, the willingness to cast myself into the flames of social rejection for the sake of a poor joke given to make but a few people laugh. And it is for this reason, it could be that I am less socially aware as I should be, more apathetic about myself as I should be, and care too much about what others think (but significantly less than others do).

Meanwhile, at least convictions will not be impeded by appearances or social presence.